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His manner of going smote her brain. Was it credible? Was it possible to think of Alvan wounded? the giant laid on his back and in the hands of the leech? Assuredly it was a mockery of all calculations. She could not conjure up the picture of him, and her emotions were merely struck and stunned. If this be true! But it can be resolutely disbelieved.
Madame Emerly proved at least her sincerity before many minutes had passed. Chancing to look out into the street, she saw Clotilde's mother and her betrothed sister stepping up to the house. What was to be done? And was the visit accidental? She announced it, and Clotilde cried out, but Alvan cried louder: 'Heaven-directed! and so, let me see her and speak to her nothing could be better.
She swung round to the side of her lover against these executioner parents, and scribbled to him as well as she could under the cracks in her windowshutters, urging him to appear. She spent her heart on it. A note to her friend, the English lady, protested her love for Alvan, but with less abandonment, with a frozen resignation to the loss of him all around her was so dark!
I've spoken to many a sentinel outpost who wasn't deader on the subject in monosyllables than mademoiselle. She has a military erectness, and answers you and looks you straight at the eyes, perfectly unabashed by your seeing "the girl she is," as you say. She looked at me downright defying me to despise her. Alvan has been tricked by her colour: she's icy. She has no passion.
Clotilde never knew, and Alvan would have been unable to date, the origin of the black thing flung at her in time to come when the man was frenzied, doubtless, but it was in his mind, and more than froth of madness.
"There, there, Alvan, please don't swear again," said the lady, interrupting. Hillbrook, by the way, is not the only place in Christendom where a vestigial polytheism forbids the taking in vain of the Evil One's name. The jug of maple sirup which the easy ways of village life had permitted Hillbrook's foremost citizen to carry home from the store was not there. "Are you quite sure, Alvan?"
'Surely you must, said he; 'where is the lady who could talk and think as you do without knowing Alvan and sharing his views! Clotilde was both startled and nettled. 'But I do not know him at all; I have never met him, never seen him.
The thought that Alvan lay wounded and in danger, was one thought: that Marko had stretched him there, was quite another, and was a livid eclipsing thought through which her grief had to work its way to get to heat and a state of burning. She knew not in truth what to feel: the craven's dilemma when yet feeling much. Anger at Providence rose uppermost.
We have our duty to to our fellow beings who don't want to . . . to . . . er." He stammered. She looked up at him with wide eyes, and her lips were slightly parted. He went on mumbling ". . . Pain. . . . Indignation. . . . Sure to misunderstand. I've suffered enough. And if there has been nothing irreparable as you assure me . . . then . . ." "Alvan!" she cried. "What?" he said, morosely.
As the full import of that revelation imparted itself to Alvan Creede's understanding he visibly shuddered. For the child could not have heard a word of the conversation.
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